Latest Microsoft Blogs

My one-hundred-and-eighty-second podcast is up . Scott's in Mexico this week and he's sitting down with Molly Holzschlag . Molly is a well-known Web standards advocate, instructor, and author and correctly works for Opera as an evangelist. She explains the history of HTML, SGML and XML and we chat about where we think the web is headed. Molly is on Twitter , and at http://www.molly.com . Subscribe: Download: MP3 Full Show Do also remember the complete archives are always up and they have PDF Transcripts , a little known feature that show up a few weeks after each show. Telerik is our sponsor for this show. Check out their UI Suite of controls for ASP.NET . It's very hardcore stuff. One of the things I appreciate about Telerik is...

In my last post, I presented a general overview of the CodePlex foundation and talked a bit about what it means to the .NET OSS developer, admittedly without much in the way of details. I plan to fix some of that in this post. Before I continue, I encourage you to read Scott Bellware’s great analysis of the CodePlex foundation which covers some of the points I planned to make (making my life easier). It’s a must-read to better understand the potential and opportunity presented by the foundation. There’s one particular point he makes which I’d like to expound upon. The CodePlex Foundation will bring influential open source projects under its auspices. The details aren't clear yet, but it's reasonable to assume that the foundation will...

Yesterday, Microsoft announced some exciting news about the formation of the CodePlex Foundation (not to be confused with CodePlex.com project hosting website despite the unfortunately confusing same name) whose mission is to “ enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities ”. This is an 501(c)(6) organization completely independent of Microsoft. For example, search the by-laws for mentions of Microsoft and you’ll find zero. Zilch. One thing to keep in mind about this organization is that it’s very early in its formation. There was debate on trying to hash out all the details first and perhaps announcing the project some time further in the future, but that sort of goes against the open source...

Microsoft’s strategy with open source has evolved over the past several years as we strive to make Windows the platform of choice for customers.  My team has participated in that process first hand, we’ve worked hard with the PHP community to ensure PHP runs great on Windows , integrated PHP installation into the Microsoft Web Platform Installer , and engaged some of the most popular PHP applications like WordPress , Drupal , and SugarCRM to ensure customers have a great experience running these applications on Windows and IIS.  We’ve also worked closely with the jQuery project to make it a natural part of building applications with ASP.NET.  Today I am happy to be a part of the announcement that Microsoft is sponsoring an open...

TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS: If you enjoyed this post, or this blog, please make a secure tax-deductible donation directly to the American Diabetes Association . Please read my personal story about life as a diabetic and donate today . ALL PROCEEDS will go to Diabetes Research. Everyone collects utilities, and most folks have a list of a few that they feel are indispensable.  Here's mine.  Each has a distinct purpose, and I probably touch each at least a few times a week.  For me, util means utilitarian and it means don't clutter my tray.  If it saves me time, and seamlessly integrates with my life, it's the bomb. Many/most are free some aren't. Those that aren't free are very likely worth your 30-day trial...

Here is a sample ASP.NET MVC application to show how to create URL shrink/snippet/etc and handling of shorten URLs. The purpose of this sample project is to show developers how simple it is to create a simple URL redirection service like tinyurl , is.gd or snurl . To get a full listing of all available URL redirection services, check out the open directory listing . I thought it was interesting and thought you might too.   Technorati Tags: Microsoft , ASP.NETOOP , Open Source Read More...

Visual identity is important. (Plus, you need something besides the url to put on a tee-shirt.) Cool open source applications all have cool logos. Since this is a collaborative project and since I have NO artistic ability, I thought we could get some artistically capable folks involved in NETOOP by starting a logo contest. (Remember, good applications should be theme-able so were are going to NEED aesthetically creating folks involved after we implement a skinning and teeming strategy.) So, if you have an idea for a log, email me a file (.png, .gif, .jpeg ONLY) . I’ll create a wiki page and we’ll collectively decide which one to use. When you email the file, include whether you want it posted with a URL or email address or not.   Technorati...

Yesterday I announced and new project I’m starting( READ HERE ) Since last night 40 people have joined the private wiki to participate in the collaborative design. “The Project” now has a name and a domain ! NETOOP – the .NET Object Oriented Portal www.netoop.com (Is were it will run……) One of the commenters to my blog post asked, What guiding patterns will you be using, and what technologies? Is this an ASP.NET Ajax w/Linq to SQL thing? Of course it will be ASP.NET and use Microsoft SQL Server but the rest is for us to discuss and decide. In response to another question – ALL EXPERIENCE LEVELS ARE WELCOME. One of the goals is for the end result to be ready to install, use, modify, and extend by ANY developer, so we NEED folks with all different...

Really, I should say, lets DESIGN an application together since I’m going to do most of the building so that I can record How-Do-I videos along the way. The idea is to build a feature rich application and use it’s construction as a collaborative learning process as much as possible. (Features, design decisions, code and test practices, etc.) The application will be a “Sports Community Portal”. I have several reasons for choosing this for the basis of the project. I can use a subject matter that I know and love (Fighting Sports) and my knowledge of the subject matter will help with create great use-cases, object models, and data models as well as features and functionality that will easily map to any type of “community”. The application will...

A while back a young developer emailed me asking for advice on what it takes to become a successful developer. I started to respond, I don’t know. Why don’t you go ask a successful developer? But then I thought, that’s kind of snarky, isn’t it? And who am I kidding with all that false modesty? After all, the concept of a “clever hack” was named after me, but the person who came up with it didn’t have 1/10 of my awesomeness which is exceedingly apparent given the off-by-one error that dropped one of the “a”s from the phrase when it was coined. This, of course, was all before I invented TDD, the Internet, and breathing air. ( note to the humor impaired, I didn’t really invent TDD ) But as I’m apt to do, I digress… I started thinking about the...